Help me hone my language skills

[blazeofglory]

I write for several forums in pseudonyms. Some of them are critical of my writing skills. Writing is my cup of tea. Every morning I wake up and switch to my writing table with a laptop on it. I get glued to writing for a couple of hours before taking my breakfast. I work for a company and I have busy schedules. Back home in the evening I sit again for reading and writing. The desire of being a good writer is very strong and that I can not be dissuaded or give this up at any rate. English is not my birth language yet I am obsessed with it. For through it I can go across wider sections of people. I do not believe in nationalism. I do not want to be hooked to narrow limits of geography, religions, language communities, racisms, cultural barriers and the like. I feel comfortable with all religions, across all sections of people.

That is why I chose to write in English despite the fact that I am not good at it. But I am not a snob to do so. This is out of humility, out of the feelings that the planet is home to me and the inhabitants thereof are my own relatives regardless of which lands they inhabit and which tongues they with. That is why I chose the English language from many others thinking that I can be in contact with all of you no matter I am in different hemisphere culturally, economically, geographically, politically.

But I am unsure of my language skills to put across my ideas spontaneously.

[novelsryou]

You need to construct more complex sentences.

[Sweets America]

I see what you mean, but I think your English is quite good. Now that's funny that I judge the quality of your English while English is not even my first language either! :lol:

Interesting that you chose English because you could reach out to more people whereas I got close to it because it enabled me to escape from people around me! That's the contrary!

[Virgil]

I write for several forums in pseudonyms. Some of them are critical of my writing skills. Writing is my cup of tea. Every morning I wake up and switch to my writing table with a laptop on it. I get glued to writing for a couple of hours before taking my breakfast. I work for a company and I have busy schedules. Back home in the evening I sit again for reading and writing. The desire of being a good writer is very strong and that I can not be dissuaded or give this up at any rate. English is not my birth language yet I am obsessed with it. For through it I can go across wider sections of people. I do not believe in nationalism. I do not want to be hooked to narrow limits of geography, religions, language communities, racisms, cultural barriers and the like. I feel comfortable with all religions, across all sections of people.

That is why I chose to write in English despite the fact that I am not good at it. But I am not a snob to do so. This is out of humility, out of the feelings that the planet is home to me and the inhabitants thereof are my own relatives regardless of which lands they inhabit and which tongues they with. That is why I chose the English language from many others thinking that I can be in contact with all of you no matter I am in different hemisphere culturally, economically, geographically, politically.

But I am unsure of my language skills to put across my ideas spontaneously.

First if those other forums are critical of your writing, perhaps they are not worth participating in. Your English seems quite good. I can tell at times it is not your first language. I catch an awkward prhrase or sentence, but for the purposes of forum discussion you are way more than adequate.

If you wish to get proficient, I think you need continuous feedback from someone. I think you're way beyond whatever help a book can provide. I certainly think reading and discussing helps. If you can find someone to monitor your writing and corrective feedback, I think that would be the best help. One other thing is to actually spend a considerable amount of time in a native english speaking country, but that's probably out of the question. Perhaps it might help if you listened to some youtube videos of english speaking people.

I hope that helps Blaze. I hope no one on this forum has been critical of your English.

[SleepyWitch]

I agree with Virgil. your English is more than adequate.
(I disagree about text books though. there's been a lot of development in teaching/self-study material and there are lots of high-quality grammars, dictionaries and excercise books around.)

one thing you wanna keep an eye on is "register". I noticed you often mix very formal or even archaic vocab with informal or colloquial expressions


the planet is home to me and the inhabitants thereof are
you could go for "and its inhabitants" there to make it sound less old-fashioned.

I don't think mixing of registers is a problem in itself (you'll find it in journalese style, too), but you can usually tell when it's done by a non-native speaker.

qualitiy dictionaries usually have labels like formal, informal, colloquial, dated etc.
some monolingual dictionaries I'd recommend are:
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 7th edition
Mac Millan: includes study pages about writing
Collins Cobuilld
and especially LDOCE: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 4th edition
this is a good dictionary because it's got lots of collocations etc (= typical combinations of words that a foreign learner cannot predict)
but there is no perfect dictionary, so any of them will do

if you don't wanna spend lots of time looking up words, it usually helps to remember where you picked up a word, eg. an academic essay vs. teenage comedy film, The Times vs. The Sun that will help you decide which contexts to use it in.

if you give me some time I can look up some good text books for you...

(P.S.: I'm not a native speaker myself, but I'm studying English to be a teacher, focusing on Linguistics...)

[Virgil]

Listen to Sleepywitch. She's an excellent teacher. :)

[jgweed]

More often than not, and this is certainly understandable for someone who does not have a native understanding of English, it is the nuances and connotations of words that seems to get in the way of what you want to say. Using words precisely is often difficult, given the many shades of meaning they have and not choosing the most appropriate word for what you want to say.
Very often, confusion and misunderstanding can be the result of not qualifying words to make their meaning more precise, or by using the same word to describe different objects or ideas when different synonyms are called for.
Sometimes this can be overcome by using the formula:
"X (one word), by which I mean Y (example, quotation, paraphrase)." Looking for these structural techniques when reading and adopting them to your own style when writing would no doubt help.
Cheers,
John

[byquist]

To be candid, everything that you have just set forth is crystal clear. And I remember seeing your face on the site, and always expecting something genuine, solid, and constructive. So, you are either "pulling our leg" or just in need of a tad of confidence. Have you studied the film "Educating Rita"? There's a lot about clarity, precision, exactitude in that film. I need more than hands and feet to count how many times I've viewed it (well, have shown it to many classes). Another one for clarity is "Stand and Deliver." Are you familiar with that film?

I could only suggest what would be to be benefit to us all--build vocab. That is easy to get lazy about and not add any new words every week or month, but if you are so totally into writing then your "bread and butter" are words; thus vocab building should be a pleasant venture. Along with core vocab, also the thousands upon thousands of idioms such as "cool as a cucumber." Why, pray tell, a cucumber? Why not "cool as a fig" or "cool as a pineapple"? English is riddled with idioms.

[blazeofglory]

I want to thank all of you for your invaluable suggestions.